Technical information
Security
DomiData incorporates industry standard user authentication components, maintained by Microsoft. Hestia, as a Microsoft Registered Partner benefits from the latest security alerts and patches. The database servers themselves are located in a dedicated facility that mandates no public access to the building, video surveillance and biometric security.
Robustness
The DomiData application network includes switching redundancy that allows us to provide 100% network availability. If there is a hardware failure or single communication failure, a fallback will be seamlessly applied with no downtime (N + 1 hot failover). Sprint and MCI provide dual internet connectivity and packets of data can be switched seamlessly between these providers. Hestia host redundant servers that allow us to switch operation to a standby machine in the case of a single complete machine failure. In the event of a partial failure, parts are available in stock and can be switched with a one hour maximum turnaround time.
Our network arrangements, powered by Cisco 6500 chassis based routers, are shared with Vodafone, The Royal Navy, T-Mobile, General Electric Corporation and other blue chip organisations. This network runs at a maximum of 10% capacity at peak times which easily allows for any sudden spikes in activity on the internet.
Power is provided from a commercial dedicated underground conduit with a battery backup. In addition, diesel generators on the roof can provide crisis power at maximum demand for 48 hours, including keeping the high powered heating, ventilation and cooling system running.
Technology
Hestia has many years' experience of the administration and smooth running of very large scale Microsoft SQL Server databases. SQL Server is widely recognised as the de facto standard for large scale, highly available applications. The DomiData application is built using ASP.NET the latest generation web development platform that is specifically designed to work closely with SQL Server and provide solid data services to the web site.
ASP.NET introduces the concept of Server Controls which are a genuine step change in the march towards software re-use and rapid application development. ASP.NET server controls, akin to lego bricks, allow developers to produce stable applications in record timescales. ASP.NET provides compiled execution which allows for faster operation, often the same application rewritten in ASP.NET achieves a 300% to 500% performance increase. The DomiData application is designed to operate over a web farm, meaning that if the number of clients increased from, say, 50 to 500 then additional servers could be introduced and the work automatically shared without the need for any code to be rewritten.
ASP.NET also provides great strides in application robustness due to its inbuilt garbage collector. ASP.NET applications cannot leak memory thereby providing far greater robustness. The symptoms of memory leaks will be familiar to most (including some well known older versions of popular packages). An application may start to run more slowly, perhaps over a few days and then stop suddenly. Experienced system administrators will also recognise these symptoms when reboots of servers for "routine maintenance" becomes necessary. This situation is eliminated since DomiData is running latest generation, well constructed and deployed technologies. The DomiData web application does interface with other services and applications written by third parties over which we have little control. If one of these applications contains a memory leak then the application server is configured to detect the situation, start up another worker process and redirect all new web requests to the new process. Then, when the existing ASP.NET process has finished all its work it will be shut down and the user will be none the wiser.
Disaster recovery
The DomiData database is backed up seven times per week. A differential copy is taken every night and a complete copy every week. These 21 tapes are held for three generations in a location separate from the Hestia offices. In the event of a catastrophic failure (e.g. flood, bomb) at the main database site, the tapes can be loaded up at Hestia's own data centre and full service resumed within 24 hours.
