Data Centers

Our Data Centers are the heart of our operations. ANS Online provides multiple secure facilities for maximum uptime, bandwidth and redundancy.

Locations

Akron, Ohio staffed, managed facility and Cleveland, remote managed facility. Our facilities are managed by IT professionals and certified systems engineers. They manage our redundant connections and methods to the Internet and make sure traffic is optimized. Our facilities have multiple levels of network hardware and provider dependencies and include T1, T3, and fiber sonnet ring technology with redundant paths. BGP failover is used to provide automated failover between separate providers. Redundant AC systems, 750KW Diesel generator and Natural gas generators along with UPS systems provide fault-tolerant power backup. Security systems with keycard and camera recording monitors people traffic.

Hardware

As an HP and Compaq partner, we use the latest tools and technologies available. Using HP server blade technology, we can offer the industry's highest level of blade servers and technologies optimized to address our customers' needs. Server blades can be installed in seconds and are ready for automated provisioning.

We have attempted to eliminate as many single points of failure as possible in our server and network architecture. All servers have a RAID-5 array of hard disks to eliminate any downtime with a single hard drive failure. We use dual power supplies when possible and the servers are outfitted with a minimum of two network interfaces. When possible we have clustered our servers together or placed them in a Citrix server farm to provide additional redundancy. We recommend to our customers that are hosting mission critical applications that they host a minimum of two servers with us to offer cluster/failover capabilities.

Monitoring

All servers are monitored 24/7/365 and our staff is auto-notified if any problems should occur. We consistently monitor all of the hardware, the entire network, each software application as well as all environmental factors in our data centers. Additionally, we provide our customers with the ability to remotely power cycle their dedicated servers if they are handling administrative tasks through advanced remote console technologies.

Support

We only use equipment from major manufactures. All of our servers are HP and Compaq Proliant servers and we maintain service contracts for each server that requires Compaq to respond on hardware failures. We also have on the shelf spare parts and hot standby servers as additional backup. As a HP/Compaq partner, we have access to high level technicians in case of a software/hardware issue 24 hours a day. ANS is a Microsoft Certified Partner as well as a Microsoft ASP Hosting Partner. Our relationship with Microsoft gives us round the clock emergency support with any of their business products or operating systems.

Internet Connectivity

ANS Online utilizes connections to multiple backbones to ensure that data reaches the end-user in the fastest, most efficient manner possible, using BGP4 routing and our Cisco network. We have relationships with multiple Tier 1 providers like AT&T, Qwest, Sprint, as well as local second-tier providers.

Customer Connectivity

We offer connectivity from virtually anywhere in the world, providing customers with global access to software applications. Customers can access our data center via:

• ANS Fiber Sonnet Ring Private Network with redundant Tier 1 Internet Providers

• Internet via any method (dial-up, DSL, Cable Modem)

• Virtual Private Network (VPN)

• Frame Relay through AT&T Corporation, Sprint Corporation and MCI WorldCom, Inc.

• Private point-to-point lines

Note: While connection speeds may vary, 33.6k to 56kbs dial up modems are capable of accessing the data center (typically used for remote road users). We prefer reliable T1 access, although we support DSL, ISDN or Cable modem access.

Security Features

ANS uses Microsoft Windows NTFS security at the server level, and documents are sent to the server using ICA, which encrypts information and offers an additional level of security. All user sessions are encrypted. The default encryption level provides bi-directional encryption between the server and the client using RSA Security's RC4 encryption algorithm, using a 128-bit key. Typical clients using our managed ASP services have Cisco VPN's with up to 3DES encryption to our facilities.

ANS uses fault tolerant web servers and Citrix Secure Gateway (CSG) servers for access to our data center. These servers utilize advanced clustering and 128bit certificates to protect users and data from hackers.

ANS also protects users from:

• Seeing programs other than those specifically designated.

• Running programs, including downloaded applications other than those specifically designated.

• Seeing share points other than the one specifically designated.

• Accessing any data other than their own.

• Viruses from email or other sources.

Backup Capabilities

ANS performs daily backups of customer and system data and it is moved offsite nightly. Our backup rotation schedule allows daily, weekly and monthly restores. We provide each user with a "remote disk drive" so files can be stored on our servers which are backed up every day. Users do have the choice to save files on our servers in their "remote disk drive" or on their own computers.