Data Center

Headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, Peak 10 is the leading independent data center operator and provider of managed services, delivering scalable, economical, and reliable solutions for hosting and managing complex information technology infrastructure. Peak 10 combines its 15 data centers and portfolio of managed services with localized engineering and support to serve market-leading companies. The company is SAS70 Type II compliant and helps companies meet the requirements of various regulatory compliance acts such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Payment Card Industry (PCI), and Gramm-Leach-Bliley (GLBA).

Peak 10 owns and operates world-class facilities in Jacksonville, Tampa, Atlanta, Louisville, Charlotte, Raleigh, Cincinnati, Nashville, and Richmond. The company primarily uses Cisco® products across the board, including several data center and switching products such as the Cisco 7600 Series Routers and Cisco Catalyst® 6500 Series Switches. Peak 10's customer server configurations are dependent on individual customers, who typically co-locate their infrastructure into the Peak 10 data center.

According to Ronnie Frames, director of network services for Peak 10, the Network Engineering business goal of offering the highest level of service over copper and the ability to limit rates was a key driver for Peak 10 to explore ways of enhancing network service offerings.

"We wanted the ability to offer gig-level service over copper and to rate-shape, fix, or rate-limit both ingress and egress at the customer's port," says Frames. "We see instances where customers subscribe to a specific level of bandwidth with the capability of bursting to the speed of the port. We also see instances where customers do not want to pay for that capability and prefer to have fixed bandwidth and fixed costs. Bottom line is we needed to be able to control the parsing out of bandwidth to meet the needs of our customers."

Peak 10's Network Engineering team looked at a handful of switch solutions from other vendors before deciding on Cisco Catalyst 4948 Switches to work in conjunction with existing Cisco Catalyst 6509 Switches to provide Peak 10 customers first-level layer access and Hot Standby Router Protocol (HSRP) redundancy.

"Since we already had Cisco at our distribution layer and had received great results from the Cisco Catalyst 2948 switches, we felt confident about our selection to upgrade to the Catalyst 4948. Combining the redundancy features of the 4948 to work with our redundant distribution pair of Catalyst 6509s and redundant core pair of Cisco 7600s made perfect sense," says Frames. "We liked the dual redundant power supply built into the Catalyst 4948 and the fact that no external RPS was needed."

According to Frames, the ability to control the rate of traffic and reduced footprint of the Cisco Catalyst 4948 Switches were among the biggest selling factors in their selection.

"The rate-limiting abilities and processing throughput capabilities were a huge selling point for us," says Frames. "Most of our equipment is 1U to 1.5U, and the prospect of replacing our 1U devices was of concern to us. The 1U form factor of the Catalyst 4948 made it easy to replace anything we had that was 1U and even 1.5U because we could replace it in its same footprint within the data center."

Frames says the ability to apply rate-limiting policies to the customer was another result from the Cisco Catalyst 4948 upgrade.

"Cisco especially excelled over the competitors that we looked at when it came to how the rate-limiting policies applied to the customer and the interface," says Frames. "The Catalyst 4948's ability to take a single defined policy and apply it per VLAN or per interface was a big deal for us. The 4948 doesn't aggregate the defined rate limit policy across the interfaces or VLANs that the policy is applied to. Instead, each interface or VLAN to which the policy is applied is treated as an independent instance of the rate limit policy. This was huge win for us because it reduced the amount of configuration that we needed to maintain. On the competing switch we tested, we had to create a new policy for each interface or VLAN that we were going to apply that policy to."

Lower latency was another result of the upgrade to the Cisco Catalyst 4948, according to Frames.

"The low latency and performance characteristics of the Catalyst 4948 were very compelling," says Frames. "Potentially, we can have up to 40 plus customers on any one 4948 switch without any single customer consuming all of its resources. The Catalyst 4948 has demonstrated the ability to perform at tremendous throughput rates. We have seen the 4948 perform at rates of over 200,000 packets per second with no visible impact to the device or service."

Frames says the largest benefit that the Cisco Catalyst 4948 has brought to Peak 10 is the ability to offer customers the rate levels that they desire.

"Being able to fix the cost for customers is one of the biggest benefits that the Catalyst 4948 has provided us," says Frames. "We are able to fix the customer's bandwidth, and therefore the costs, based on policies that we apply to the individual customer interface. Our customers, in turn, don't have to concern themselves with exceeding those costs and receiving a higher-than-expected monthly bill."

According to Frames, another benefit of the Cisco Catalyst 4948 switches involves the advanced security features accessible through the centralized control of the switch to restrict unauthorized users from altering the configuration.

"Our base Internet uplink offering is unfiltered to the customer. It is an open Internet pipe that we place additional managed services offerings upon for our customers," says Frames. "Our core, distribution, and access infrastructures have to be reliable, scalable, and able to perform under tremendous load. One of the reasons that we selected the Catalyst 4948 was for its capability to sustain performance under loads that would otherwise overwhelm older switching architecture. The ability of the 4948 to switch packets and examine policies without taxing the CPU was a significant benefit."

Being able to do more with a streamlined staff is another benefit that the Cisco Catalyst 4948 Switch has brought to Peak 10.

"Local access is important to our customers and while we do have local employees that support our customers in each market, our Network Engineering team is regionalized. The Catalyst 4948 Switches are extremely dependable and allow us to manage and support the infrastructure without the need of a Network Engineering team member in each location."

Frames says that in terms of return on investment, the Cisco Catalyst 4948 Switch allows Peak 10 to control overage charges at the data center and pass those savings onto customers.

"The Catalyst 4948 allows us to give the customer a predictable monthly cost that is constant without having to pass along unexpected added costs," says Frames. "It is important to Peak 10 to decrease the volatility as far as what revenue we accrue from overages. If we're able to translate that to fixed monthly recurring revenue and meet the need of the customer, then we're providing an additional customer service that is a win/win."

As Frames looks ahead at next steps with the Cisco Catalyst 4948 Switch, he says 10 gigabyte per second configuration is in Peak 10's future.

"Right now our growth plan is to support the channel until we increase to four or five gigabits per second," says Frames. "The upgrade is dependent on the growth of our business, but based on past projects and history, I'm confident that in the near future, we'll be at 10G."

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