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Netmatrix Background

Q: What is Netmatrix' background?

Brian Simpson, a programmer from the later 70’s, started Netmatrix Corporation in 1981 (first as ASTI Consultants). Netmatrix has been in business 28 years.

We programmed our first internet based relational database application in 1996 for the Reform Party of Canada (aka the Canadian Alliance Party, aka the Conservative Party of Canada).

The communications division (now an Internet Service Provider / hossting Provider) started as a Bulletin Board System (BBS) in the 80's. (T8000.com). We were the first company in Calgary where you could dial up get a connection and send and receive internet email in 1991. The system quickly grew to over 500 incoming phone lines and 1000's of customers. We started offering high speed 128k ISDN internet connections to business in 1994. Netmatrix hosts the websites, email and email list services for companies located all over the globe with customers in Canada, US, Venezuela, UK, Oman and Australia.

Today, Netmatrix manages hundreds of corporate networks for their customers from as small as two computers to as large as 1600 computers located in several cities.

Netmatrix does not outsource anything. We own and run our own data centers. All our equipment and software is paid for and we have been profitable since day one.

This is a family-run business. Kiley Simpson, is Vice President in charge of project management and heads the development teams. He has a computer science and computer programming degree. We plan on being in business at least another 25 years.

Netmatrix has built and installed over 500 CMS/DMS websites and hundreds of online applications for customers. See our Customers Overview.

Internet Connection Redundancy

Q: How many connections to the Internet does the Netmatrix NOC have? Explanation of each connection, connection failure, switching connections, load switching, and maximum downtime in the event of a primary internet connection fail.

Netmatrix is Multi Homed with Rogers Telcom and Telus Advanced Communications. Each on pure fiber at 155mbps Full Duplex. CIR = 100Mbps burstable to 155Mbps. ATM switch is configured at 1000Mbps VBR-rt (VBR-real time)




Netmatrix has two Network Operating Centers. The main NOC is manned 7/24/365. The backup NOC is dark (unmanned). The two NOCs are connected to each other at 100Mbps. (soon to be upgraded to 1000Mbps). All customer data is backed up nightly to the secondary NOC. If the primary NOC is taken off line by a catastrophic event the secondary NOC kicks in automatically. All equipment in the secondary NOC is an exact duplicate of the primary NOC. They are physically four kilometers apart. If a catastrophic events takes out both NOCs, well let’s just say we have much bigger problems. We are in the process of evaluating a secondary NOC in a separate city.

Power Failure

Q: What happens in the event of a power failure?

Both NOCs are on UPS (four hours) with backup power generators. We have enough fuel to last seven days. We can’t remember the last time we had a power failure, it’s been that long.

Hardware Failure

Q: What happens if a hard drive, a motherboard or any other hardware component fails?

Every primary server put into production has an exact duplicate secondary server. The primary servers are mirrored to the secondary servers. All the servers are fault tolerant (see below). The only components that aren’t hot swappable are the motherboards, memory and CPUs. However unlikely a total server failure is, traffic is automatically routed to the secondary server. Also, we have spare components for all our servers in stock. In the event of a total server failure, we can rebuild a primary server within an hour while the secondary servers continues operations.

With this primary / secondary redundant server configuration we have developed over the past fifteen years, there is zero downtime.

Our web and hosting servers are state of the art. They are engineered to fortune 500 enterprise class standards. We upgrade our servers every two years. They were last upgraded in the Winter of 2007/2008. Current configuration:

• Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition – SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition
• Intel Server Board S5000PSL, with Integrated Management Module 1333Mhz FSB
• Intel SC5400LXNA U5 Server Chassis with 2 x 830W 1+1 DUAL Hot Swapable Power Supplies
• 2 Dual Redundant Hot Swapable 830w Power Supplies with Fallover Power Supply Controller
• 2 x Intel Xeon E5345 Quad - Core 2.33GHz CPUs
• 8 gig Registered Ram ECC DDR2 667Mhz
• LSI 8 Drive, SATA II 3Gbps, 250 MHz 3.0 Gb/sec 512meg RAM PCIE Raid Controller
• Four Hot Swapable Fans
• Two Hot Swapable Drive Cages (all drives are Hot Swapable)
• 4 x 750gb Seagate Barracude SATA II 3Gbps 16mb Cache & NCQ Raid 5
• 2 x 120gb Seagate Barracude SATA II 3Gbps 8mb Cache & NCQ [OS] Raid 1
• 2 x 750gb Seagate Barracude SATA II 3Gbps 16mb Cache & NCQ [Hot Spares]

In the event of a disk drive failure, the disk drive raid controllers will automatically rebuild the disk array from one of the two hot spare drives.

Backup and Recovery

Q: Is there a way for us to get copies of our backed up data on a regular bases – weekly, monthly etc?

As stated above you can have FTP access to the exchange assets, uploaded files and uploaded images directories. It would be up to you to archive them.

We can also provide a daily backup of any SQL database.

Q: How long would it take to recover our system in the event a recovery is required

As per “hardware failure” above, there would be zero downtime. We can rebuild a server in about an hour. We can also move your website to a different servers in the time it takes to copy the files.

Q: What is the recovery point for our backups – is the system backed up once each evening or are there incremental backups throughout the day?

All servers are mirrored every hour. We also backup to the secondary NOC every four hours.

Q: Does the backup and recovery include the analytics data we will log as well?

Yes, all the logs are included.

Q: What is your backup retention policy?

Backup retention is daily, weekly and monthly

Operating System Patching

Q: Do you perform OS patching?

OS patching is performed as they are released. Patches that require system reboots are done between 2am and 3am.

System Performance

Q: Do you have website performance indicators that will help you resolve problems when there are performance bottlenecks so they can be resolved in a timely manor?

We collect performance indicators on all our equipment, servers and services. We measure bandwidth (in & out), cpu, memory, memory used, load, files, disk (size, speed, free, queue length), up time, # of messages, # of sessions, Anit-Spam, DNS. These are graphed on five minute, hourly, weekly, monthly and yearly averages. Some are displayed at www.netmatrix.com/bandwidth.

24 / 7 Monitoring & Support

Q: What are the details of your the Netmatrix Monitoring and Support.

Our main NOC is manned 7/24/365. We monitor every firewall, switch, router, server, every service on every server and temperatures every fifteen seconds. We have deployed several monitoring tools. If there is a failure we know about it instantly. Alarms (sirens, flashing lights, cell phones) are triggered by the monitoring tools.

We also have an alliances with ISPs in California and Colorado whereby we monitor that ISP’s internet connection and they ours. These relationships provides all parties with added assurances of monitoring from “outside our networks”.

Maintenance

Q: How often is maintenance preformed?

Any maintenance preformed is done between 2:00am and 3:00 am Sunday mornings.

Trouble Calls

Q: What is the trouble call procedure?

Our main phone number, 403 686-1169, is monitored 24 hours a day. Because of our extensive network monitoring systems, we are alerted instantly of any issue.

Security

Q: What security measures are in place to protect the system and our website?

At Netmatrix we take security extremely seriously.

The web servers are locked down tight. There are no user (personnel) accounts on the web servers or SQL Servers. Only on the Exchange servers are their accounts. The administrator account is never logged in except when setting up a new website or applying patches.

All servers are located behind our IPAD firewalls. The only pass through port is HTTP and/or HTTPS. So your website is as safe as the HTTP Service. We use Windows 2003 servers and IIS VI. Netmatrix hosted the Reform Party of Canada, the Canadian Alliance and the Conservative Party of Canada websites. We currently host several Members of Parliament websites. Hosting these high profile customers puts a target on our back. Our servers and network have never been hacked, ever. We hosted the Calgary Unix Users Group from 1994 to 1999 (when they switched to their own high speed internet connection) because our firewall was the only one their members could not hack into.

Additionally the physical location of our NOCs, is a very closely guarded secret. Only the people working in the main NOC know it’s location. They don’t know the physical location of the secondary NOC. All mission critical personnel at Netmatrix under go a yearly criminal and financial background checks. Mission critical employees are ones who have access of any kind to the servers. Only Kiley and Tim have access to the SQL servers.

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