What is a DDoS Attack?

In the world of computer networking, a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) or a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is considered to be a malicious attempt to severely affect the performance of a computer or resource on the Internet, or to stop it from working completely.

There are many varied reasons why individuals or organisations carry out these attacks and also many different methods. For example, DDoS attackers may target their competitor’s websites, especially if it is an e-commerce site, they may also wish to disrupt news, financial organisations such as banks, and even DNS servers.

One way of thinking about how these attacks take place is to imagine a Call Centre, selling products, which has (for arguments sake) 50 incoming telephone lines. If 50 people called and got through, then all of the incoming lines would be busy, this would mean that nobody else with a genuine sales enquiry would be able to get through to buy something. In simple terms this is how a DDoS attack works, but instead of telephone lines, it hogs most or all of the available Internet bandwidth available to the computer or resource. In a nutshell it is all about limiting or disabling communication.

The good news is that there are several ways of stopping such attacks from taking place. However, varying levels of protection means varying costs, meaning that the most robust form of protection can cost a small fortune.

In the UK, denial-of-service-attacks are a criminal offence and can lead to a maximum prison sentence of up to 10 years.

Climate Friendly Data Centre

It's fair to assume that any Data Centre would consume a fair amount of power, considering that there are racks and racks of co-located server hardware, not to mention air conditioning, lighting and the general power consumption of the building itself. And, as a result of the high power consumption, some may suggest that this is bad for the environment.

However, there are things we can to to reduce the effect we have on the environment by investing in the most energy efficient hardware around. In an earlier article I discussed our 'eco-friendly' cooling systems, which are state of the art and the very latest in environmentally friendly ways of keeping our customers equipment at a low temperature.

We also use similarly environmentally friendly uninterruptible power supply (UPS) units, which have been listed on the Department of Energy and climate (DECC) Energy Technology List (ETL). These two bodies encourage businesses to invest in only approved energy saving technologies.

Riello UPS Ltd who manufacture the UPS devices had this to say "Products undergo rigorous energy efficiency testing before being included on the list, so the qualification is testament to our team’s hard work and echoes our commitment to being Europe’s most environmentally friendly power protection company.”

So in conclusion, if you choose to co-locate your servers at our Data Centre in Leeds, West Yorkshire, then you can be sure that we have made every effort to be a friendly to the environment as possible, whilst also providing the very best in Data Centre services.

Leeds Colocation News

As we approach the end of 2012, we are pleased to announce that due to a recent upsurge in new colocation business, we have now begun work on phase 3 of our Data Centre build.

Our current Data Centre has plenty of space and when we moved in it was basically an empty shell. We decided to build the Data Centre suites in a modular way, so that we didn't end up with large, empty air conditioned rooms using up unnecessary power. Therefore, initially we created suite 1 as the main power room which houses some rather large UPS batteries, intelligent power distribution and routing to the diesel generator which is housed at the rear of the building. Suite 2 is the first room to house our 20 full height racks, which are a variety of 42U units, some of which contain quarter lockable sections.

Since suite 2 is now almost full, and considering that we have people wanting to move their servers into our Data Centre in early 2013, we have no option but to complete works on suite 3 which can cater for another 30 full racks.

In reality this is not a massive undertaking as we're not starting from scratch again. It is merely an extension of what is already there. The racks are already in position, as are the cooling systems, so all we have to do is run network and power into each of the racks, as well as configure a network switch for each.

These days many applications and IT systems are increasingly going into the 'cloud', and as such the need for high quality Data Centers is on the up and up. Our facilities are based in north Leeds, just off the ring road so we're very accessible and we love to show people around our Data Centre as we're very proud of what we have achieved.

If you have any colocation requirements, and even if you're not from Leeds, why not give us a call to arrange a site tour?

For more updates and news, please feel free to follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Charity Work

We are pleased to announce that we are currently working with a local charity called the LS14 Trust, who are based just around the corner from us in Seacroft, Leeds.

The trust is passionate about the local community and was set up by a group of local residents to make a difference to the neighbourhood. They are based in the Digital lounge and offer a range of services to the local residents including;

• Free internet and IT resources
• Help with writing CV's
• Meeting space
• Drop in and general advice
• Volunteer opportunities
• Free legal advice clinics

CCS Leeds felt that this local charity was worthy of some free help from us, so we contacted them back in August. We will be providing them with free internet access on our network, website hosting and going forward we will be there in the background, supporting them in any way we can.

We're not just about leased lines and co-location here at CCS and we do like to support other worthwhile causes whenever we can.

More information on the LS14 Trust can be found on their website here, and as ever feel free to look at our own site here.

Phase 2 has begun

We are pleased to announce that phase one of our new Data Centre is now filling up fast, which means that we now have to bring forward our plans for the second phase, 3 months earlier than originally planned.

The expansion into the next suite means that we now have an addition 30 full racks available, all with twin power feeds which are backed up by our intelligent power distribution systems, UPS and generator backup which has enough fuel to power the whole Data Centre for 72 hours in the event of a power failure.

Our eco-friendly cooling systems have already been extended into the new suite so the next few weeks will be spent finishing off the network cabling and monitoring systems.

If you want to know more about our Data centre please follow this link or alternatively give us a call on 0113 294 6699 to arrange for a tour around our facilities.

New data centre opens at CCS

CCS’s Peter Knapp, Giles Falkingham and Nick Ryder in the company’s new data centre

After several months of hard work by the CCS team we are delighted to announce the opening of our new data centre in Leeds – this will ensure we continue to deliver the service in business server collocation and cloud computing.

The centre, which went live last week , forms part of a major £150,000 investment by CCS and which can house up to 4,800 servers cooled by an eco-friendly air conditioning system which will significantly reduce the company’s energy costs and carbon emissions.

The reason for the choice of location is multi-threaded. Our new data centre on the Leeds Ring Road at Seacroft gives us the space, power, carrier availability, visitor facilities and most importantly gives our staff instant access to server equipment to ensure it runs uninterrupted 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year.

The data centre also benefits from a so-call ‘N+1 configuration’ which means multiple uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs) are in place to ensure there are no outages or down time. It is also connected to the CCS’s core London network via a direct dual link, with a third carrier link due to come on line in the next couple of months.

We have also upgraded our security on the data centre which means new and existing clients can ensure their data is safe.
At a time when many companies are cutting back on capital investment, at CCS we believe it is vitally important that we continue to invest in the best IT infrastructure to ensure that existing and new clients benefit from the best possible service.

All the funding for the new data centre came from CCS’ own internal resources and we have not looked outside the business for third-party finance.

The site has been planned from the ground up to allow expansion without disruption to any customer, including pre-configured provision within the power systems for additional suites to be brought on line with no service interruption. Moreover, further UPSs can be brought on line at the same time as we expand cooling systems with no impact on customer service.

In due course we hope to have an official opening so keep a look out for your invite.