Hi there,

Following months of planning and preparation, we’re proceeding with major works revolving around our rack space, network and security. This is led by several factors, including a desire to improve our domestic and international network routing, an expedited security uplift project to take significant workload away from VMs, and a total re-cable to allow for proper utilisation of the major rack upgrades that we’re also conducting.

This will involve some major works within AS138521:

• Power Circuit upgrades (single-phase 240v to three-phase 415v)
• Power Rails (PDUs) replacement (un-managed to managed)
• Fibre diversity from patch panels to interconnect rooms
• Introduction of several Internet Exchange Points (IXPs)
• KVM* connections from servers into rack-mount KVM
• Fabric Ports on-standby allowing emergency transit
• Firewall policies/rulesets deployed above VM-level
• Overhauling our internal Virtual Private Network
• Cellular emergency access to our Sydney Core
• Biometric locks also on-rack (front and rear)
• Cabling upgrade to armoured optical fibre

While we’ll approach the works in a staggered manner, there will be considerable out-of-business-hours impact to most services during these works due to the major nature of the upgrades. We will work to ensure as little impact as is possible throughout these major upgrades. The benefits of completing these works are great news for service resilience, network performance and redundancy, and general operational ease-of-use.

If you have any queries or concerns, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Cheers,
Merlot Digital

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KVM in this context is “keyboard, video & mouse”, not “kernel virtual machine”.