NASK has extended its product offer with virtual hosting. We offer a possibility to virtually lease a server instance located in a professional NASK Collocation and Hosting Centre. Our offer is addressed to all companies for which the quality of hosting services is a crucial element determining success of their businesses.

Using virtual hosting offered by the NASK Collocation and Hosting Centre allows to:

• reduce costs of the access to the internet without the need to invest in expensive telecommunication devices,
• a significant reduction of the costs linked with the purchase of physical servers,
• reduction of the costs linked with the purchase of devices necessary to provide uninterrupted power supply for the IT equipment,
• reduction of the costs linked with the purchase of the software necessary to manage services,
• reduction of the costs linked with the training of employees necessary to maintains one’s own wide area network,
• reduction of the costs linked with technical employees necessary to provide 24/7/365 technical supervision over the equipment,
• reduction of the costs linked with the maintenance of the equipment,
• reduction of the costs linked with the data backup and archiving, and thus elimination of the costs of investments in devices and software,
• ensuring optimal environment conditions, suitable for telecommunication devices,
• ensuring physical and IT safety of the equipment,
• guarantees of the data flow capacity adjusted to the company requirements.

We address our offer to companies operating in all sectors of the economy: small, medium and large-sized enterprises. We adapt our solutions to individual needs of our Customers.

Elements of the virtual hosting service

• Virtual machines

We put virtual servers, launched on the virtualisation platform Xen® hypervisor, at the Customer’s disposal. Each of the offered virtual machines has assigned and guaranteed hardware resources of a physical server and additional elements necessary to provide virtual hosting service (internet access link, backup space, panel for the service administration and others).

• High availability

As part of the virtual hosting service, we provide access to a disk array connected with physical servers through FC (Fiber Channel) redundant links. Two independent FC links are connected to two independent array controllers, which ensures extremely high availability and speed of the disk resources.
Additionally, as part of the virtual hosting service, we provide a high availability of the service thanks to a redundant topology of the XEN system. In case of a potential failure of a given physical machine, the virtual server shall be launched on the emergency physical device.
In order to ensure the highest possible level of the security of resources located on the virtual machines, links to virtual servers are separated via VLANs.

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Example of a scheme of connecting virtual machines to the FC switch

• IT safety

In order to ensure safety of the Customer’s resources located on the virtual machines, we provide an operator-class firewall system which allows to minimise threats from the external network through a precise filtering of undesired traffic.

• Preinstalled systems and applications:

XEN virtual machines are provided with the preinstalled operating system and applications allowing to publish content in the internet (Debian or Centos operating systems, Apache server, MySql database and PHP scripting interpreter).

Our virtual hosting offer includes three basic service options and the Custom option, which allows the parameters to be adapted to individual customer needs:

* Half of the space is allocated for the backup in the form of the array snapshots, the other half is available as an additional server disk.
** The monthly data transfer is limited by way of the maximum allowable data flow for a given hosting option: Small VPS – 4 Mbit/s, Medium VPS – 8 Mbit/s, Large VPS 16 Mbit/s. The fee for each GB of data exceeding the value specified for a given option amounts to 0,98 PLN/GB.
*** Additional monthly fee for using the PLESK panel – 300 PLN net/month
*** * Administration services provided by the NASK and included in the option prices:

• monitoring the virtual server operation,
• updates of the Customer’s operating systems and applications,
• monitoring the logfile ,
• administration of the firewall system,
• minor tasks ordered by the Customer (e.g. adding FTS accounts and databases)
• refining the configuration,
• servicing the Customer’s requests,
• servicing potential failures (response time 1h, repair time 8h),
• additional works ordered by the Customer (major works) – 200 PLN/h, paid additionally.

As part of the virtual hosting service, there is also a possibility to use the Custom VPS option, which allows to fully adjust the service parameters to the Customer’s requirements.

Access to the virtual server

The Customer is granted access to the assigned virtual machine with the preinstalled operating system and Apache, Mysql and PHP applications. The Customer gets an FTP account, which allows to upload files to the server, and a database instance together with an account in the MySQL database administered by the phpMyAdmin panel, or a direct access to the MySQL port (option available only in case of a secure SSL VPN connection). Optionally, a dedicated panel to administer PLESK services is provided as part of the purchased service, which allows to edit and set up new FTP accounts and to specify their rights.

Maintenance of the infrastructure dedicated to the virtual hosting service.

The infrastructure dedicated to the virtual hosting service is located in the NASK Collocation and Hosting Centre, which is attended by qualified personnel 24 hours a day. The personnel premises are in a direct vicinity of the NASK Collocation and Hosting Centre, which guarantees a quick response in case of a potential failure of the devices and systems.

Traffic statistics

As part of the virtual hosting service, we provide the Customer with reports on the inbound and outbound traffic (MRTG statistics). Access to those stats is granted via a login and password (to be given on a dedicated page).

Data backup

We provide backup of the virtual machines in the form of disk snapshots on the disk array. The snapshots are performed on a daily basis. We store 7 latest backups.
At the Customer’s request, it is possible to save archive files on DVD.

Physical safety of the virtual hosting service
The NASK Collocation and Hosting Centre is located in the NASK headquarters (Warsaw, 18 Wąwozowa street).
The Collocation and Hosting Centre (CKiH) is equipped with a multi-level system of physical protection and access control. The building is protected via closed-circuit TV cameras.
The Centre provides stable environmental conditions allowing an uninterrupted operation of the devices, both servers and network interfaces.
The Centre is equipped with the air-conditioning made up of redundant conditioning cabinets, which keeps the air temperature and humidity on a constant level. The air temperature is 19°C ± 1°C, and the humidity 55% ± 5%.
The Centre is power supplied via two independent transformer sub-stations. In case of a failure of one of them, the power is automatically switched to the other one. The Centre is equipped with an automatic fire-extinguishing system with fire detectors and nozzles sending fire-extinguishing gas (FM-200), both in the main server space, as well as under the lifted floor.