Some of our readers may be familiar with the virtualization.info Rent-A-Lab facility.
Operated by our trusted partner Kybernetika, Rent-A-Lab (RAL) is a cutting-edge data center located in Zurich, equipped with some of the latest and greatest servers, storage and network gears a virtualization professional may ever desire.
RAL is available for rent to worldwide customers. virtualization.info and Kybernetika offer unrestricted, on-demand (24/7) access to its bare metal since January 2007.
Customers can use it to install complex, multi-tier virtual infrastructures (our hardware is supported by every player in the market, including Citrix, Microsoft and of course VMware) and do whatever they want with them: training classes (the most common scenario), product evaluations, benchmarks, etc.
The project started three years ago with a single rack, equipped with 9 enterprise class servers, 2 SANs and 2 network switches. Over time, we continued to expanded the facility.
In summer 2008 we were already able to offer access to over $1 million (USD) in hardware to concurrent customers from around the world (at impressive connection speed).
Down the road we achieved some customers’ recognition and support from vendors: NetApp, EMC and Cisco filled our racks with their hardware and selected our facility to host presentations, online events (like our first round of OneHourOn webcasts with EMC), and premiere workshops (like the first Cisco Nexus Bootcamp in Switzerland).
VMware and Cisco even selected RAL as their preferred location to run the first UCS Bootcamp in Switzerland, which is running since the beginning of March. And so far we served over 200 attendees.
Today we are extremely proud to announce that RAL further expanded and moved to a new location.
The facility now features 30 HP servers (DL380 G5) and a Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) blade platform with 10 blades (soon to be upgraded to 20 blades).
Servers and storage (from Dell | EqualLogic, EMC, HP and NetApp) are interconnected by multiple Cisco 4948 network switches and Brocade 5000 storage switches.
Every single point of failure in the infrastructure (including Internet connectivity of course), which is worth over $2.5 million (USD) now, has been eliminated.
And just in case you want to see with your eyes we have three live webcams:
(username/password: tvdond / tvdond)
The whole data center has been migrated to a new location in Zurich downtown. It’s 4 minutes from the railway station and 15 minutes from the airport, surrounded by hotels.
We built a classroom facility all around the racks (two rooms, for a total of 90 seats), so that it’s easier for our customers to hosts their courses, demos and meetings on-site, and not just online.
We are also planning to host some exclusive mini-conferences in these rooms, showing new products in action rather than on PowerPoint slides.
Vendors that are interested in arranging launch events at virtualization.info Rent-A-Lab are welcome to contact us.
We are preparing other surprises. Stay tuned for more!