A visit to a Datacenter in Hanoi

During my trip to Hanoi, to set up with Iulia a development team for the ISD, I took the opportunity to visit a new “open” Datacenter. As I explained in a previous post, our network strategy is to deploy a regional strategic point in an open Datacenter to have greater flexibility.Indeed, we have to consider that a growing branch will expand every 12 to 16 months. This expansion implies moving. If we were obliged to move systematically the international links, it would increase significantly the budget of the expansion. The strategy is to “freeze” the international linkages that allow us to control our quality service throughout. Then, the links between the data center and regional branches are more accessible and less expensive to move.In preparation for a potential opening of a second branch in Vietnam (Da Nang, Hue or Ho Chi Minh City) I went to visit this Datacenter on the outskirts of Hanoi and close to our branch office. I have already had the opportunity to visit several data centers in France and Romania. But I confess that I was impressed by the level of this one:- External and internal access control 24H/day- Video surveillance circuit of 70 cameras- Double power supply but only one national provider- Double generator set with 72 hours of autonomy- Double UPS circuit with 20 min of autonomy- Operator hosting room (currently 6)- Bay hosting space of 500 m²- Additional services: data recovery room, rollout room…I was very impressed by the services made redundant, as well as the environmental quality and technical skills of the interlocutors. There are not many hosting possibilities available at this level in Hanoi, certainly a bit more in Ho Chi Minh City.The strength of this type of this hosting service is the presence of many operators who will be able to ensure the necessary interconnections. For that provider it is still low. Most rely mostly on the capacity of NTT (the historical Japanese operator) who have invested also in the Datacenter sector.Our project is progressing. It will be achieved when we have completed our search for international operators and we have sufficient bandwidth for our services. We also need to negotiate the best rates possible and therefore we are playing the game of competition between the different operators.Prices are changing rapidly. We are presently negotiating with our two current operators to double our bandwidth for the same rate.