Our Data Center
VolunteerMatters provides world-class infrastructure and 24x7x365 monitoring necessary to protect your data and keep our systems up and running constantly.
Facility Exterior
Our data center; a 10,000 square foot, raised, former-bank is built to withstand flooding and Category 5 storms.
Maximum Security
VolunteerMatters employs one of the fastest and most reliable networks in the world. It delivers the lowest latency in the industry along with zero packet loss. The network is built based on a series of dedicated links between 15 state-of-the art data centers in 12 cities across North America using multiple high-speed connections. We have strategic peering relationships with over 500 networks and we utilize four Tier 1 upstream providers (MCI, Savvis, AT&T and Sprint) to ensure continued high performance.
Backup Systems
Our managed backup solutions are 100 percent maintained by professional backup administrators – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Clients are protected against risks associated with system changes, catastrophic server failure and other controlled or uncontrolled events. VolunteerMatters’s infrastructure is designed meet these growing needs with an intelligent and scalable storage management solution that is robust, scalable, fast, responsive and efficient.
VolunteerMatters’s implementation of IBM Tivoli Storage Manager’s (TSM) backup and recovery solution is a centralized, comprehensive enterprise level solution that makes backups and restores fast and flexible with minimal customer impact. Business backup needs are met using weekly full backups and incremental forever backup of files, which provide a complete backup solution yet minimizes valuable backup storage space and bandwidth consumption as backups are performed.
Super NOC
VolunteerMatters’s facility is monitored by a “Super NOC” (Network Operations Center) located in the center of the building which utilizes “state-of-the-art” hardware and software. Total network utilization is carefully monitored to ensure there is always more than a 2-to-1 ratio of available bandwidth to peak bandwidth.
Fiber Core
Our state-of-the-art Data Center Network, comprised entirely of carrier-class, Cisco Systems and Foundry Networks hardware, features redundancy at all layers. At the hardware layer multiple routers and switches are configured in parallel with dynamic routing and switching to ensure automated fail-over during hardware, software or link failure. Each data center is located directly on multiple diverse fiber rings, and is redundantly connected to IP carriers by two separate local providers, Bellsouth and OnFiber. BGP4 is used in conjunction with the RouteScience PathControl system providing automated real-time (sub-second), best path route adjustment to ensure that traffic is delivered to the best provider.
Diesel Generator
The 1 1/2 Megawatt Onan Generator that, if needed, can provide resources during electrical outages. The generator can supply the required electrical power to the entire center.
UPS
3,500 kva PowerWare UPS units. The UPS’s are designed as a true n 1 configuration. The PowerWare configuration allows us to add another UPS to the design simply by plugging a pigtail to another unit. The design automatically recognizes the new unit and redistributes the electrical load accordingly.
Redundant Cooling Systems
Our HVAC (Heating Ventilation Air Conditioning) systems have full particle filtering and humidity control. The environment within the dedicated hosting data center is maintained at a cool 68 degrees to ensure that your server is functioning at its best in an optimal environment. Fully redundant cooling systems insure that the center is always operating at a temperature of optimum server performance. The units are designed as a true n 1 configuration.
Inergen Fire Suppression
If combustion is detected, Inergen fire suppressant is released into the area. Inergen fire suppressant is made up of naturally occurring gases found in the air we breathe so it’s safe for people, safe for servers and safe for the planet. The fire smothers without causing any of the damage done by messy foams or sprinklers.
Firewall Security
VolunteerMatters’s firewall acts as a secure barrier between our servers and the Internet. It monitors all traffic to and from our servers, and decides whether or not this is normal activity or a malicious attempt to access your server: It will then filter the traffic accordingly. Access Control Lists (ACLs) are used on the firewall to permit or deny access to resources based on source and destination information.
Our advanced firewall uses stateful packet inspection to keep track of the state of packets going through it over a period of time. With SPI the firewall is able to distinguish which packets are legitimate for the type of connection it is using. Packets that match a known connection state will be allowed, while others will be rejected. Using stateful packet inspection, a firewall can stop port scans, spoofing and synflood attacks as well as other types of malicious activity.
Transaction Security
SSL Certificates – Member login, donation submissions, online orders and administrative access are all protected by secure socket layer encryption so that all sensitive data is protected.
Data Abstraction
VolunteerMatters is implemented as a mult-tiered application that decouples the web-tier from the application tier. This architecture insulates customer data by only allowing VolunteerMatters web services to talk directly to the data layer.
